


Gone, Gone, Gone

by shewho



Series: Here and Gone, Gone, Gone verse [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (no mpreg (to be clear!)), Break Up, Breaking Up & Making Up, Character Death, Child Death, Crying, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, Hate Sex, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Resolution, Sad with a Happy Ending, Separations, Wakes & Funerals, non-graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1563686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewho/pseuds/shewho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing was going to fix this.</p><p>Nothing was going to make it like it never happened, like they hadn’t watched their son—their son—die, like they hadn’t watched his tiny coffin as it was lowered into the ground.</p><p>The day they buried their son, the sky was a disgustingly clear blue and the sun was shining for all it’s worth.</p><p>Courfeyrac cursed the sky and sobbed.</p><p>Jehan didn’t say a word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

                The doctors’ scissors ripped through the coat, sweater, tiny t-shirt underneath. Goosebumps rose on Jehan’s arms just looking at his son’s tiny bare chest, bare back pressed against the cold examination table.  He counted his own heartbeats as they readied the paddles one-two-three-four-five-six“Clear!”

                Benny’s entire body jerked upward like a cartoon character as electricity ripped through his blood and bones. Courfeyrac’s panicked wail echoed against his shoulder.

                Nothing.

                “Again.”

                “Clear!”

*

                The day they buried their son, the sky was a disgustingly clear blue and the sun shone for all it’s worth.

                Courfeyrac cursed the sky and sobbed.

                Jehan didn’t say a word. He was scared to touch his husband, to hold him, to just simply tell Courfeyrac that he loved him.

                None of that would fix it. None of that would make it like it never happened, like they hadn’t watched their son—their _son_ —die, like they hadn’t watched his tiny coffin get lowered into the ground.

                None of that would make it better, so he didn’t even try.

*

                Courfeyrac’s grief was, in retrospect, to be expected. It was loud, intense, full. He lashed out constantly and each time he had to try harder to rein himself back in, back to the normality his life was supposed to entail. Jehan recognized the pattern; of course he did, he’d known Courfeyrac for years. Courfeyrac would self-destruct, fall and fall and fall until he could find it within himself to pull himself together and get up and try again. But he didn’t, couldn’t. He just kept falling. Kept spiraling, kept destructing. And in a horrifying display of futility, like trying to catch smoke in his hands, like keeping an ocean of water cupped between his palms, just like trying his damnedest to save their son, Jehan was losing him.

                Jehan’s grief was quieter, softer, more concentrated. While Courfeyrac yelled and screamed and beat his fists against any object that would hold still for long enough and drank and _hurt_ , Jehan pulled away. He faded, until he had nearly vanished, until he became but a shade of himself. A shadow. An illusion. A long-forgotten dream.

                Courfeyrac didn’t—couldn’t—understand it. In truth, Jehan had never really expected him to. He called Jehan unfeeling, heartless. Asked if he ever cared at all. As if he couldn’t have.

                Jehan didn’t dispute him. He simply didn’t have the energy to. He felt gutted, hollowed out.  There was a peculiar emptiness inside of him, dark and wide and cold and void of anything and everything. Never before had he known that he could carve out that much room within himself and his life for just one thing, one beloved, tiny thing.

                And yet…he had. He’d found room, made room, for that little being—his _son_ —inside himself, in his very soul, and then suddenly there he was, left standing there, staring at the wreckage of his life, wondering if it was possible to drown in a never-ending sea of nothingness.

                But Courfeyrac’s grief was so vast, so big, that it pushed out and out and filled everything with its stifling presence, until Jehan, with his small, quiet grief couldn’t quite fit. He pulled farther and farther away from his husband but the space he created for himself filled just as quickly as he found it.

                 So he left. He left before he suffocated in Courfeyrac’s ever-expanding grief. 

                *

                “How you holdin’ up, Prouvaire?” Bahorel bumped their shoulders together companionably as he sat down beside the poet.

                Jehan shrugged, closing his notebook, if for no other reason than to hide the utterly blank page that he had been staring at for the past quarter hour. “I’m fine.”

                The words were hollow and both men knew it.

                Bahorel looked at him with wide, sad eyes. Most of them did, his friends. He hadn’t changed, not really, not from what he could tell. He still went to work. Went home to his tiny apartment. Went to their meetings. Did the writing that Enjolras requested. He was doing everything he was supposed to do, and maybe he was a bit quieter than he had been, before, but no one could fault him for that. He was doing what he was supposed to, but his friends wouldn’t stop looking at him like that, and they wouldn’t stop looking at Courfeyrac like that.

                They wouldn’t _stop._

                “You know you can always talk to me, kid. You know that, right?” The older man never stopped watching Jehan’s face, it seemed. Like he was expecting to see something. What he expected, Jehan didn’t have the first clue.

                “I know.”

                He had no intention to.

                Ever.

                “Alright, Prouvaire. So long as you know.” Bahorel stood, patting his shoulder a few times before leaving him be, and Jehan looked back down at the pen in his hand in discouraged confusion, trying to remember what he was supposed to be doing.

                He didn’t understand his grief.

                It wasn’t as if he’d never known someone who’d died before, as if he’d never grieved before. But it was so, _so_ different. It was unstable, and it kept coming and going and coming and going forever. He figured that he must have been doing it wrong. Courfeyrac’s grief wasn’t like his. His grief is visible, and dynamic, and so different in every respect. Courfeyrac would probably disapprove of Jehan’s grief, but Courfeyrac hardly looked at him anymore, so who really cared? He tried to shut it down, to make it stop because he couldn’t grieve _wrong_ if he wasn’t grieving at all, and really, that seemed like a fairly logical course of action.

                He was fine. He’d be okay. Just not that particular day.

*

                He was fine. Just tired. A little headache from staring at his computer’s blank screen for too long. He was fine and he was reaching up into the kitchen cabinet to grab a plate for his reheated takeout dinner and…

                Jehan was not a violent person. As a rule, he did not act out in anger. Not ever. Even when he raised his voice, it was more about just getting heard above the usual din than about anger. He was not his father, not Bahorel, not Grantaire. He was Jehan. And he was not a fighter.

                He had been in exactly one fight, in high school.

                He didn’t really know why, all he remembered was a boy shouting words at him, ugly words, and then the blind rage bubbling up through him. Before he really knew what he was doing, his fingers had closed into a fist and punched the guy square in the face, breaking his nose with a subconsciously satisfying _snap_.

                There had been blood everywhere. He didn’t like having the other boy’s blood on his hands. He didn’t like having it on his shirt, which should have been teal, but was instead a weird brownish color.

                He didn’t like to talk about that day, even though it was the single day his father had felt that his son had constituted any and all of his respect.

                The first plate hit the edge of the countertop and shattered, pieces flying out around him, and it was so different and it felt so _good_ , to just, break because his son….his _son..._

He threw another plate, and then another, and then he reached up into the cabinet and swiped every last thing out of it, onto the counter and then to the floor, everything shattering and smashing and echoing off the ceiling, the walls, the floor itself. He threw everything that would break, or fly to pieces, and his life was like that, no rhyme or reason left anywhere in it, just pain, everywhere, all the time, because his son never…

                He never.

                Eventually he ran out of things to break. Eventually he ran out of steam. Eventually he collapsed into a pile of broken glass and ceramics, holding his head in his hands, waiting. Waiting for something to make sense, because nothing did, not really, not anymore.

                So he waited.

                It was Grantaire who found him, his emergency contact called when he didn’t show up for work. Jehan hadn’t moved, but then Grantaire was there, and he pulled Jehan gently up from the shards of pottery and glass, shoved him into the shower and stood outside the door while Jehan sank down under the burning spray and sobbed, pounding a fist against the tile until it bruised.

*

                He and Courfeyrac grew to exist in opposing planes, and that meant that there were a lot of things they strictly _did not do_.

                They didn’t speak.

                They didn’t work together.

                They didn’t live together.

                They didn’t hardly ever look at each other.

                And they absolutely did not touch.

                Which was why it was more than a little confusing, when Courfeyrac stormed into the back room of the Musain one night, waving their latest publication and swearing loudly, shouting at him, “What the fuck even is this, Jehan?”

                He glanced at the pamphlet on the table between them; at least five or six or possibly even seven grammatical or spelling errors had been violently circled with thick permanent marker, the smell clinging to the glossy paper.

                “Maybe you shouldn’t even be writing,” Courfeyrac hissed.

                “Like you haven’t fucked up the numbers in the last three articles we published. I know; I’m the one who wrote up the corrections and apologies in the following articles! Writing is _all I have_. Unlike you, I’m not about to start drowning myself in cheap liquor, pretending I’m still at university and all my problems can be solved with shots and shitty beer.”

                “That was _years_ ago!” Courfeyrac shouted, his shoulders tightening up.

                Jehan huffed out a bitter laugh. “ _Riiiiight_ ,” he snickered punitively, drawing out the word in about five syllables. “Because you’ve grown up _soooo_ much since then.”

                Courfeyrac unclenched his fists and that was all the warning Jehan got before the dark-haired man slammed into him, pressing him back against the wall. He was expecting a punch, but there was a sharp breath, and then a kiss that was all teeth, and maybe that hurt more than it should have.

                Nothing about it was gentle. Courfeyrac’s fingers latched onto his collarbone and pressed his fingertips in, hard enough to bruise it blue-violet, his nails digging in around the bone _hard_ , and Jehan was pulling sharply at Courfeyrac’s hair, and their mouths were touching, but it was more biting than kissing, but somehow that was okay, and that terrified Jehan.

                Courfeyrac was the one who pushed it, though, because of course he was. Who pressed his thigh between Jehan’s, too forceful to do anything but hurt. Who thrust his hand into the waistband of Jehan’s pants and boxer briefs, gripping him rough and dry.

                Jehan didn’t hesitate any longer before going shoving down Courfeyrac’s pant and going for his cock. He shot for fast and dry, but when he used his nails, Courfeyrac yelped out, “Fucker,” before twisting his wrist around Jehan’s cock, nowhere near close to slick enough.

                Their movements hovered just on the harsher edge of painful, fast and furious and up against the wall, like they were strangers meeting in some anonymous back alley, and Jehan felt like he was cheating. That man, that man with his mouth sucking bruises into Jehan’s skin, with his nails gouging stinging red furrows edged white into Jehan’s arms wasn’t the Courfeyrac he’d married. It wasn’t Courfeyrac at all. But he wasn’t right, either, he wasn’t quite that Jehan, either, and what they were doing, that was not the kind of sex a married couple had, not the kind of sex _they_ used to have; instead bruising and painful and spiteful, every movement just another burst of hatred.

                He found with little surprise that he didn’t care. Couldn’t care, because he couldn’t handle it if it were any other way. It was the first time anyone had touched him since…before, and he needed to differentiate it. He didn’t know if it was the first time anyone had touched Courfeyrac, though, and that—the thought that they were so broken, so fragmented and fucked up that they weren’t even really married anymore, that it had _ruined_ them—made Jehan livid. What right did Courfeyrac have to be okay? How the hell could he just keep working and drinking and fucking like it had never even mattered? Jehan was isolated, and he was wrecked, all the fucking time, and Courfeyrac just…wasn’t. He was handling it—poorly, yes, obviously, with a lot of liquid help, but he was _handling it_ —and…and Jehan still had trouble finding the energy within himself to even get out of bed most mornings.

                Jehan came, scraping his nails so hard down Courfeyrac’s neck and upper back that he heard a cry, unable to help the vindictive little smirk that played over his lips at the pained sound. Courfeyrac followed right after him, and they both leaned heavily against the wall for a moment to just breathe, sticky and slick and hurt. Jehan’s bottom lip had split, bleeding dirty copper into his mouth. There were bright red, angry claw marks on his arms and down Courfeyrac’s back. They both stood unnervingly still, until Courfeyrac gathered himself enough to snort derisively and mutter, “You’re a shitty fuck,” as he tugged his pants back up over his hips.

                Jehan’s anger snapped instantly, bright white and hot in the center of his chest, and he shoved Courfeyrac off of him, retorting, “You’re a shitty husband.”

                “At least I’m a fucking human being!” Courfeyrac shot back with a snarl, giving Jehan a condescending look from underneath his dark brows.

                “You were a shitty father, too!” Jehan shouted after him.

                The door slammed so hard it shook the walls.

                Jehan screamed wordlessly in frustration and punched a hole through the drywall.

*

                Jehan was silent where Courfeyrac was loud. He forced things back, down, away. He held on to what little he had left with both white-knuckled hands, nearly shaking apart on a weekly basis in the living room, kitchen, laundry room. He cloaked himself in layer upon layer of apathy, and he poured himself into writing in a way he had never before.

                No one called him. No one dared to, not after the dozens of screaming matches he had treated each and every one of his friends to. So when his phone finally did ring, he didn’t even react with thought, just picked it up and mumbled his generic work-phone greeting, “You’ve reached the desk of Jean Prouvaire, this is he, how may I help you?”

                It wasn’t for work, though. It wasn’t even _about_ work. It was Bossuet, seeming about as stunned that Jehan picked up as Jehan was that Bossuet of all people had called. Things hadn’t been good between them, not for a while. Not since Bossuet had a kid, and a family, and Jehan...didn’t. It was stupid, holding his happiness against him, and Jehan knew that, knew it in some fundamental part of himself…but it was easy.

                Bossuet still hadn’t said anything. “How’s,” Jehan stopped, clearing his throat painfully. “How’s Reece?”

                Bossuet paused. “Good. A little colicky, but good. How are you, Jehan?”

                “Fine,” he responded, automatic, knee-jerk reaction.

                Bossuet sighed. “Jehan. This has gotta stop.” When Jehan said nothing, he continued, plowing on, “Talk to someone. Please. ‘Ferre is…you gotta know; he’s worried sick about you. And Bahorel is beside himself, he won’t even—”

 _No, no, he couldn’t do it, Bossuet needed to stop, stop talking,_ “Bossuet—”

                “No, Jehan. I know you—”

                “Bossuet that’s not—”

                “You’re still my friend. Or you used to be, anyway, because I don’t really even know where we stand anymore.” Jehan frowned, so deep that he could feel the groove working between his eyes. “But what you’re doing…it’s not right. You need to talk to someone. Just. Talk to someone. Talk to ‘Ferre, or ‘Rel, or to R. Talk to me. Talk to Courfeyrac.”

                Something in Jehan’s chest tightened up, just at the mention of his name. Courfeyrac left a piercing ache in Jehan, a rough wound carved into his ribcage that caught on all the wrong places. Everything about Courfeyrac hurt to even think about.

                “I can’t,” he breathed, voice thick and raw. He snapped his jaw shut with a click when it reached his ears. He wasn’t supposed to feel that way. That was what his life was all about, not feeling things so keenly anymore.

                “You love each other,” Bossuet said, _that traitor_ , and it was just too soft. Too gentle. Like he thought that Jehan was gonna shatter into a thousand pieces.

                “Used to,” he muttered, his voice cracking over the words.

                “Jehan…”

                “Give ‘Chetta and Joly my best,” Jehan choked out in a hurried whisper, hanging up to the sound of Bossuet’s protests. He flung his phone across the room, heard it slide to a stop somewhere underneath a piece of furniture. He’d worked so hard to convince himself that what—or who—Courfeyrac did in his free time was none of his damn business. They weren’t like that anymore. Married. In love. Friendly. Anything.

                They weren’t anything.

                He only managed a couple of steps before he slumped down against the wall, scraping against it all the way down, staring blankly at the carpet between of his feet, counting the moments between his breaths. It had been harder to breathe, lately, all the time. Sometimes he wondered if he could just forget to breathe altogether, stop long enough to pass out, maybe for good. Maybe then things would make sense.

                Maybe then he could get back to just _writing_ , without all the…feelings, problems, pain, Courfeyrac, _everything_ …getting in the way.

                His grandmother—God rest her soul—had once told him that God had given Jehan words so that he wouldn’t need anything else. Shouldn’t need anything else.

                Maybe it was time to remember that, to find the truth in that statement.

                Words, after all, were all he had. 

*

                They were at a meeting because of course they were. They were at a meeting, sitting in the back room of the fucking Musian, when the whole tremulous balance finally broke, and Jehan wasn’t truly certain whether it was ironic or clandestine.

                Jehan had stayed away for months, but in the end he had come back, because he had no quarrel with Enjolras, or with any of them; they were his friends and he wasn’t doing the job that they relied on him to do, so he slowly slipped back into his place within the group, working a little harder each week, being a little more vocal.

                Enjolras’ rule was that if you saw it, you ought to say it, and so the onus fell on him to tell Courfeyrac that he was getting sloppy on his statistical modeling numbers.

                Courfeyrac used to take things like that at face value, because no matter what was going on outside, their work within the group was sacred. It mattered too much to let their personal lives affect it.

                Apparently that had changed without Jehan even noticing it because suddenly Courfeyrac’s face went bright red and then he was on his feet, screaming about Jehan taking his own damn advice sometime. Jehan didn’t even know how to react, just yelled back that he was right, the work was sloppy, and Courfeyrac could stand to do a better job, but Courfeyrac wasn’t _listening,_ just kept raging and arguing and Jehan finally just snapped, yelled, “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

                Courfeyrac lunged at him, dark eyes wide and his jaw set. He hit Jehan in the chest with both hands, knocking him off balance for a moment. “You left!” Courfeyrac shouted, shoving at Jehan’s shoulders again.

                It felt like it was out of nowhere, but at the same time he wasn’t truly surprised. It was…

                It had been a year, was the thing. A year ago, to the day, they…

                And it was only fitting, that it all fell apart then. That of all days, that one turned out to be the one that finally ended it.

                “You didn’t want me anymore,” Jehan shot back, his voice laced with venom. He could feel the heat collecting in his blood, blooming beneath his skin, something somewhere between anger and terror.

                “No,” Courfeyrac conceded, or argued; Jehan couldn’t even tell. “I _needed_ you,” he said, picking up a pen from the table and twirling it between his hands.

                Jehan scoffed, digging his nails into the palms of his hands, gouging cuts over the shallow scars already there. “Why, so I could stand around and watch you drink yourself to death, Grantaire-style?”

                “Sure; maybe!”

                Jehan bit his tongue, hard enough to taste the dirty pocket change tang of blood. The Musain was dead silent, making every word ring with an air of finality.

                “Well…maybe I needed someone to stop me,” Courfeyrac said, clutching at the pen twisted between his fingers until it was bending under the constant pressure.

                “I am _not_ your keeper, Courfeyrac; you made that very clear to me from day one!”

                The pen snapped, ink spattering in a short burst of brilliant blue across Courfeyrac’s palm. “No!” he cried, whipping the pieces away from himself as if he’d been burned, throwing them to the side where they clattered against the wall. His stance was wide and stiff, feet planted firmly. “You weren’t my keeper, and I never asked you to be! You were supposed to be my _husband_ ,” the dark-haired man bit out, “And I don’t even know what that _means_ anymore, because apparently it _doesn’t_ mean you being there to pull me back when I’m toeing the edge!”

                He snarled through gritted teeth, “You don’t understand; I wouldn’t have done it! I wouldn’t have pulled you back!” Jehan’s clenched fists started to tremble, “I would’ve jumped off right beside you!”

                All the anger seemed to bleed out of Courfeyrac in that moment. “So?” he whispered, his voice rough as he tried to control the shaking and oh, that made Jehan’s chest go tight, that was his darling, that was his Courfeyrac, always trying to prove that he was so strong, all the way through, especially when he was scared, that was the Courfeyrac he knew, looking so oddly out of character, impossibly small, his shoulders tucked up tight, chin tipped down. “It would’ve been a sight better than doing it on my own.”

                “Courf,” he murmured, stunned to see his husband like that, so small and fragile.

                “I can’t _do this_ anymore, Jehan; I just,” he stopped, swallowing hard. “I,” Courfeyrac glanced around, glanced up, flustered, his frame shuddering with silent half-sobs. “Jehan, he just…,” Jehan’s breath caught painfully in his throat because he knew where that was headed, “Benny, he,” Courfeyrac hiccupped, “Jehan, our…our son…”

                And that was it; that was all he could take. It had been a _year_ and he finally broke down. He staggered forward, and got his arms around Courfeyrac just as the dark-haired man simply shattered, like spider-webbing glass. They fell against one another, and Jehan could _hear_ Courfeyrac’s sobs, could feel his pulse beating erratically in his throat where Jehan’s face was pressed as his breath ripped through his chest, harsh and wet, and it all just gave out.

                They wound up collapsed on the floor together, and the expressions of their grief mirrored their behavior over the course of the past year; Courfeyrac’s loud and obtrusive and hopelessly immense and Jehan’s soundless and small and enfolded safely inside Courfeyrac’s. And maybe…maybe Courfeyrac had realized that Jehan needed that barrier, that shelter, to hide behind so he had some room to breathe. All along, Courfeyrac had been grieving for the both of them, grieving openly so that Jehan wouldn’t have to, so that he could process everything without the world cleaving his son from him a second time before he was ready, and God, god, all the gods.

                God, they’d been so _stupid._ He’d missed Courfeyrac, he had, in a palpable way, because he’d assumed that there’d been no more room in his husband’s life for any more loss, and what they said about assuming was true; it made an ass out of you and me, out of both of them.

                They’d torn their relationship apart when they lost him, piece by purposeful piece, knowingly demolished it because they had needed something to blame, and once they’d destroyed what they’d worked so hard to build, they’d moved in turn onto themselves. And Jehan was just so done with it, so sick and tired. Achingly, finally tired of trying to pretend that losing his family wasn’t slowly killing him.

                “It’s okay,” he whispered, grabbing onto Courfeyrac’s arm, grounding him. Courfeyrac made a low, distressed sound in the back of his throat, clinging to Jehan ever more tightly. Jehan, with all his words, could only murmur, “It’s okay,” into the hot skin of Courfeyrac’s neck, feeling the pulse there quiver against his lips.

*

                He and Courfeyrac were better, for the most part. Even if Courfeyrac still cried sometimes and Jehan still felt a stab of jealousy when their friends’ children showed their faces. But he’d learned to smile, and laugh a little, and play Go Fish until his hands cramped up, even if the tradeoff meant sobbing into Courfyerac’s shoulder in the car on their way home.

                He was perched on the arm of Enjolras and Grantaire—Enjoltaire, as Courfeyrac and Joly had christened the couple, much to Enjolras’ dismay and Grantaire’s delight—’s sofa, talking to Cosette at the group’s monthly potluck dinner, the type of get-together that seemed to happen more and more frequently as the group got older and settled down and procreated.

                “Have you read that new book by—” Cossette was cut off by a high-pitched wail of “Mammmma” and a couple of blonde, freckle-faced toddlers running into her legs. She was whisked away, with a rushed apology that he waved off with a small smile, to settle the score for a group of toddlers the way only she could. Courfeyrac raised his eyebrows at him from across the room soon after and he nodded. They made their goodbyes and got in Jehan’s car, flipping on the news for background noise as they drove home.

                He was standing at the sink in their bathroom, talking to Courfeyrac through the open door, until suddenly, he felt Courfeyrac wrapping him in a hug from behind, pressing his forehead between Jehan’s sharp shoulder blades. He snapped his mouth closed with a click mid-word, staring in the mirror at himself, with Courfeyrac’s arms around him, dark curls peeping up just over Jehan’s shoulder.

                “Courf?”

                “Sorry, I…sorry,” Courfeyrac whispered, starting to pull away.

                “Hey. _Hey._ It’s okay.”

                “I just…” Jehan couldn’t see Courfeyrac’s face over his own shoulder, just the arms wrapped around himself. Courfeyrac’s hands shook, trembling a little where it wrapped across Jehan’s chest, “Can we…?”

                Jehan’s mind raced to try to figure out what was happening, what had happened. They’d been doing so well and he hadn’t seen Courfeyrac behaving in such a manner in months. Quite frankly, it scared him.

                When Courfeyrac started talking again, his voice was thick, and sort of wet. “I know we haven’t…haven’t talked, or anything, you know,” Courfeyrac sniffled a little, pressing his face more firmly into the dip of Jehan’s back, “But I…I mean, not _now_ ; maybe not for a long time, but I want…” Courfeyrac trailed off again and huffed exasperatedly, taking a couple of deep breaths. “Can we try, maybe, again. I mean, try to…try for…”

                The moment that what Courfeyrac was trying to say clicked together in his brain, all he could do was let out a soft, shaky little, “Yeah.”

                Courfeyrac stopped, stilling further against him, and Jehan could finally loosen his husband’s death-grip on him enough to turn around, grabbing Courfeyrac and leaning forward and down to press a kiss to Courfeyrac’s forehead, “Yeah, Courf, we can try,” and then another to his lips. 


	2. Epilogue

Courfeyrac was smiling that familiar sideways smile, drenched in sunlight, as he pulled Jehan out onto the back porch of their home, calling, “Come on, darling! Dance with us!” The early summer evening was bright and warm and his family was dancing to the melodious strains of…Jehan sighed.

“ _Daft Punk_ , Courf? Really? Really-really?”

“Hey,” Courfeyrac chuckled, pointing an accusatory finger at Jehan. “Their stuff was awesome and you know it.” The bright yellow flash of a hair tie on the dark-haired man’s wrist caught the other’s eye, the skin discolored around it, an indication that it had been there for days, perhaps weeks even. This in and of itself was not an unusual sight; a parent-on-the-go never knew when he’d need a spare hair tie to fix the unruly bird's nest that graced his four-year-old daughter’s head.

Jehan just raised his eyebrows, “You are so sadly mistaken.”

“The fact that you know about them at all makes me the winner, babe.”

Jehan’s mouth was open to dispute that his argument made absolutely no sense, but that was when Brigitte managed to get her tiny pale-purple-polished fingers on the volume dial, spinning it up so that the stereo was crackling, and jumping up and down, and thrashing her arms in an oddly-nostalgic sort of dance that went well with the heavy techno throb of the song.

Courfeyrac immediately copied her, only worse, a true parody of the past, and his smile split his face until his dark eyes crinkled up at the corners. His curls—cropped short again, like when the two of them had met—shone in soft light between bright daylight and violet twilight, and Jehan felt a crushing rush of love for the dancing idiot and the little girl now holding said idiot’s hands and bobbing right along with him.

The song ended, flipping over to something that Jehan hadn’t even known _existed_ anymore, and Courfeyrac’s grin took over his whole face when he heard the opening notes. He wasted no time before swooping Brigitte up onto his hip and holding her close as she kicked her jelly-sandaled feet around, giggling happily as her Daddy sang along, nuzzling his nose into the ginger-blonde hair above her ear, tickling her with his breath.

Jehan felt frozen in that moment, Courfeyrac, his daughter, his family, dancing on the back porch for absolutely no reason at all. Their life was moving ahead, moving forward, moving on, and Jehan noted the passing years in the deepening of Courfeyrac’s laugh lines, in their daughter’s crayon drawings pinned to the fridge, and the number of paint streaks they found hidden in her hair.

Courfeyrac was counting, too, he knew that, of course he did. He was counting Jehan’s words, in the volumes he published on a semi-regular basis that drove his editor up the wall, the “I love you’s” he whispered and shouted and simply said, the bedtime stories that could grow exponentially each and every night, the sleepily-mumbled promises in dark, pressed to the back of Courfeyrac’s neck, his collarbone, his shoulder, the inside of his thigh.

And even though time was moving on, passing by, Jehan was frozen, unable to tear his eyes away from a certain stupid, dancing, laughing dark-haired moron as he sang, “She has eyes just like her father’s; they are blue when skies are grey, and just like him she never stops, never takes the day for granted,” in a horribly off-key voice.

Somehow, they were gonna be just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooooo...what did y'all think? I'd really really love to hear :)

**Author's Note:**

> *waves* um, hi, hello! this is delving into a kind of new world for me, soooo...I hope you all like it alright! That is all. Have at it.


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